Calendar applications (also known as scheduling, agenda or date-book applications), such as the “Calendar” module of the ever-popular Microsoft® Office Outlook®, enable users to schedule events, such as appointments or meetings. Calendar applications provide myriad useful functionalities that allow users to manage their time effectively, such as providing reminders for upcoming events, enabling the setting of recurring events, sharing date-book information with other users to facilitate the selection of mutually agreeable times for meetings, etc.
When scheduling a meeting, for example, a meeting request (e.g. “New Meeting Request” in Outlook®) is sent with event information such as, for example, the subject or purpose of the meeting, its start time, duration and location. Occasionally, however, the location of the meeting is not a place that is familiar to the user, in which case the user can download a map of the meeting location using any web-based mapping application such as Google Maps™ or MapQuest™.
For a user operating a calendar application on a wireless communications device, it is handy to be able to map the location of the meeting or event from within the calendar application. Such a technique is described in WO 2007/040646, a published PCT application belonging to Sony Ericcson Mobile Communications AB. The Sony Ericcson technology enables the user of the wireless device to request a map showing the location of the event. If the device is also GPS-enabled, then the device enables the user to obtain directions from the current location of the device to the event location. However, the Sony Ericcson technology only works if the event location has been specified in the calendar. In other words, if the meeting request, appointment or other event does not contain address information for the location of the event, then the calendar application cannot supply this information to the map server to download the map of the event location. In an increasingly fast-paced world, it often occurs that the person sending a meeting request or scheduling an event fails to specify enough address information to enable the wireless device to directly obtain a map of the event location. Therefore, an improvement to this prior-art technology would be highly desirable.
It will be noted that throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.